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I am privileged to be married to my wife, Jody, for 29 years and to have four wonderful children. I am also privileged to serve as the Lead Pastor of the Lafayette Alliance Church in New York since 2003.

After the enthusiastic reception of millions of readers of the book Heaven is For Real, the next wave of enthusiasm (and criticism) is now ready for public purview as the Heaven is For Real movie is released nationwide this week.

I have put together a few resources that I trust will help Christians to be both biblically faithful and theologically discerning on this subject of individuals who make claims of visiting Heaven (usually via a “near death experience”), and in some instances even visits to Hell. In the end, the test of something being TRUE is not how good it makes us feel, but whether the “truth” being proclaimed is substantiated by theinerrant, and absolutelytrustworthyWordofGod. I believe that Heaven is For Real(and books like it) fail that test. Here are some resources to help you see why I believe this to be so:

“Heaven is For Real,” “90 Minutes in Heaven” and other books about visits to Heaven or Hell (Randy Alcorn)

In the past few months, I have been repeatedly asked about the phenomenally popular book Heaven is For Real. This book was again number 1 on the May 8 New York Times bestseller’s list. It has already sold something like four million copies, and it’s not slowing down.

Truthfully, I didn’t want to say anything about this book. But after being asked about it again and again on Facebook and in emails and at a conference, I’ve decided I need to say something. People tell me, “Since you wrote the book Heaven, we want to know what you think.” Well, that doesn’t make me an expert on people’s claims of after-death or near-death experiences, but for what it’s worth I’ll share my thoughts. I will also address other Christian books that claim to record actual experiences of going to Heaven or to Hell. Consequently, this will be an unusually long blog, article-length.

Heaven is for Real is written by an evangelical pastor, Todd Burpo, and tells of his then four-year-old son Colton, who survived emergency surgery and later told his family that he went to Heaven. Colton described seeing Jesus and meeting his miscarried sister and his great-grandfather, who died before he was born.

Honestly, it’s difficult for me to know what to say. I found the book interesting. Todd and Colton appear to be sincere. Parts of the book seemed quite plausible; parts of it raised questions. Some of the words that Colton supposedly spoke as a four-year-old seem more like words an adult would speak, but perhaps that’s due to his father’s memories as he tried to reconstruct his son’s words from years earlier. More seriously, I was concerned about Colton’s claim that people in Heaven have wings (he says he too had wings while there), and other details that fit popular lore about Heaven, but don’t fit Scripture. In the Bible, some angels are portrayed as having wings, most are not. But never is any human being in Heaven or anywhere else said to have wings. Some beings in Heaven, according to Colton, have halos. But that’s not in the Bible. It’s from popular art in the Greek and Roman era and more recently in the Christian art of the Middle Ages. And of course we see it in our popular culture depictions of heaven, including cartoons.

These things suggested to me that perhaps this child has seen and heard things about Heaven that worked their way into his imagining Heaven, as opposed to coming from an actual experience in Heaven. His father says Colton had never heard or seen such things, but I think a lot of children have seen much more than their parents realize.

One concern is that I have seen such great excitement among Christians in response to this book, an experiential account that in its very best parts simply confirms what Scripture has said all along. Yes, Heaven is for real, but we already knew that, didn’t we? God’s Word has told us that all along. When there is so much fanfare about accounts that simply confirm what the Bible says, I wonder if we trust the accounts more than the Bible itself. People come to hear Don Piper speak because of his story of being in Heaven, told in 90 Minutes in Heaven. But hopefully Don, as well as Todd Burpo, would be the first to say people shouldn’t need to hear about Don’s experience, or Colton Burpo’s, in order to believe in the Heaven that Scripture reveals. I think many Christians need a better understanding not only of the authority of Scripture, but its sufficiency.

On the other hand, I understand people’s curiosity about books like this. And I’m deeply grateful that Don Piper and the Burpos uphold the gospel. I don’t presume to know everything that God does. He is capable of surprising us. I certainly do not want to speak against anything that God may have done. In the Bible we’re told that Stephen, Paul and John all saw Heaven, and John and Paul were actually taken there. All three were alive when they saw it. Stephen remarked that he saw Christ in Heaven (Acts 7:56), Paul was hesitant to talk about his experience (2 Cor. 12:1-4), and John relayed his experience in the God-breathed book of Revelation.

While Don Piper and the Burpo family are followers of Jesus, most reports of after-death experiences come from those who are not. I have read many accounts of such experiences in which people who do not know Christ claim to have gone to Heaven, or its outskirts, and were reassured by a “being of light” that all is well with them.

In such cases, I do not believe the being of light they’ve seen is Jesus, since in fact the Bible makes clear that all those who do not know Jesus as their Savior have great reason to fear death, and the Hell that will follow it, if they don’t repent and turn to Him. Scripture says, “Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:15). Obviously, Satan has great vested interests in deceiving unbelievers into thinking that what awaits them after death is a place of serenity rather than of eternal punishment. (In response to someone’s question, I summarized the biblical teaching about Satan.)

As for Heaven is for Real, I certainly don’t see a false gospel in the Burpo’s account of Heaven. I rejoice that Jesus is portrayed as the only way to God, in keeping withJohn 14:6 and Acts 4:12. I could have wished for a greater emphasis on confession of sin and repentance, but on major biblical issues I don’t think Heaven is For Real contradicts Scripture. Yet on some details, such as wings and halos, I’m just…uncomfortable. Still, God uses many things without my permission, and despite my reservations! I emphatically agree with the title: Heaven is for Real. Not because Colton Burpo or Don Piper say they have been there, but because the Bible says so.

I’ve met Don Piper, author of the book 90 Minutes in Heaven, which paved the way for Heaven is For Real. I was on a panel about Heaven with Don Piper, J.I. Packer and Sam Storms. Don was a Southern Baptist pastor, and is a nice guy who believes and affirms Christ and the Bible. I saw nothing in his book that contradicted Scripture. I like Don, just as I would no doubt like the Burpo family. I don’t question his sincerity. But can I say for sure that he went to Heaven? Or that Colton Burpo went to Heaven? No. I can’t. But I also can’t confidently say that they did not. I can say for sure that there is a final judgment spoken of in Hebrews 9:27-28, and that in the ultimate biblical sense of “death,” people do not die and come back to life before the judgment. If God wants to make exceptions He can, and if he wants to give people glimpses of Heaven in a near death experience He can. But there is reason for skepticism on our part when someone makes this claim.

Sometimes there is reason for rejecting the account even when it is made by a professing Christian. I remember reading Mary Baxter’s bestselling book of being taken to Hell (after her very successful first book about being taken to Heaven, it seemed interesting that not only the publishers but God came through with a sequel). T. L. Lowery wrote the foreword to Mrs. Baxter’s book, A Divine Revelation of Heaven. In it, he says, “The inspired writings of Mary Kathryn Baxter are divinely anointed by God.” Mrs. Baxter says, “The Spirit of the living God revealed to me everything I am telling you.”

I resist such lavish claims that put someone’s book on a level with Scripture itself. This is a major red flag that to me actually discredits books. Mrs. Baxter says in her book that Jesus told her Hell is shaped like a woman’s body and resides in the center of the earth. It is occupied by snakes and rats. She speaks of “demons taking turns poking a soul with spears.” One room in Hell is called the “fun center” where there are special torments for mediums and witches. Obviously, there is no mention of any of these things in Scripture. In Baxter’s book, Satan and demons are portrayed as ruling and torturing people in Hell, whereas the Bible says they will not go to Hell until after the judgment, and they will not go to punish anyone, but to be punished by God.

Mary Baxter claims that Jesus twice abandoned her in Hell, even though He has promised that Christ experienced Hell on the cross so we wouldn’t have to, and He will never leave us or forsake us. She says it was revealed to her that God always wants to heal every Christian. But Scripture tells of many instances showing this is not so, including the example of Paul, where God did not heal him of his thorn in the flesh, but rather told the apostle that His grace is sufficient. Mrs. Baxter says people are not healed only because of their unbelief. That, apparently, would include Paul, Timothy, and a host of others mentioned in the Bible, who were sick but not healed. (Several health and wealth gospel proponents like Baxter have told of God showing them rooms of spare body parts in Heaven, awaiting distribution to all on earth who have enough faith to be healed; never mind that Scripture itself says no such thing.)

There are other claimed first hand accounts of Heaven and Hell I haven’t read, including 23 Minutes in Hell. I am told that it’s generally true to Scripture, but it also portrays demons punishing people in Hell, a picture that I find troubling and unbiblical, since the Bible makes clear it is God who punishes both demons and people in Hell.

While I am not the judge of who has really been to Heaven or Hell, I emphatically believe every near-death (or supposed “after-death”) experience must be evaluated in light of God’s Word. Where the experience contradicts the revealed Word of God, the Word must be accepted over the experience. For the Christian, there simply is no other option. We dare not start basing our beliefs on people’s memories of their personal experiences.

I suspect the phenomenal success of Heaven is for Real will tempt people to use their imaginations in telling stories about visiting Heaven. Some will be deceptive, others will exaggerate, still others may take images from a drug-induced state on a hospital bed and by power of suggestion may convince themselves that various images in their heads were actual experiences of Heaven. The financial success of 90 Minutes in Heaven and Heaven is for Real will inevitably invite others to come forward who are willing to either deliberately mislead others or convince themselves of something that was not a true experience of Heaven.

Tim Challies, a good and biblical thinker, has major reservations about Heaven is for Real. Tim calls it like he sees it, and I believe his review is worth reading, especially as a counterbalance to the way so many Christians are quick to believe people’s accounts of after-death experiences. Tim’s skepticism about the book is more definite than mine is. However, Tim and I are in 100% agreement about the danger of Christians basing any theology on such books, rather than solely on God’s Word.

Acts 17:11 tells us that the Bereans searched the Scriptures daily “to see if what Paul said was true.” Now, if ever in human history you were going to assume that another person’s words were true, not finding it necessary to double-check against the Scriptures, surely it would be with the Apostle Paul. Yet the Bereans were commended for carefully scrutinizing Paul’s words in light of Scripture. If Paul’s words needed to fall under the judgment of God’s Word, obviously mine do, and Don Piper’s do, and Todd and Colton Burpo’s do.

I do believe that something is seriously wrong if people take more time to contemplate and discuss Colton Burpo’s account of petting Jesus’ rainbow-colored horse, or of Jesus wearing a crown with a pink diamond, than they do studying what the Bible actually says about Heaven. The back cover of the book says “Heaven Is for Real will forever change the way you think of eternity.” I would say, “Seek to let the Bible alone change the way you think of eternity.”

I hope people will study the Scriptures first, then secondly read biblically-based books on the subject of Heaven. I would feel like an opportunist recommending my book Heaven. So instead I’ll recommend Joni Eareckson Tada’s book Heaven: Your Real Home, which I told her was my very favorite. Graciously, Joni told me that mine was her favorite. So there you go, we are each other’s endorsers, but I am certainly the greater beneficiary of hers than she is of mine! And the fact that I mentioned this certainly does make me an opportunist after all, doesn’t it? So does the probability that people who work on EPM staff will link to my Heaven book in this blog, and I will do nothing to stop them. 🙂

If it’s any consolation, I sought to base the Heaven book solidly on Scripture, and then make clear when I was speculating. I always attempted to base that speculation on biblical grounds. I am no doubt mistaken on some points. But I hope that my attempt to honor Scripture as absolute authority, and the fact that I make no money from the book, will at least provide some counterbalance.

By the way, I first wrote about Heaven in my novel Deadline in 1993, back before it was cool to do so. 🙂 Of course, everything I’ve said about other people’s books applies to mine, despite the fact that I make no claim to having seen or been to Heaven (in fact I make the explicit statement that I haven’t). Don’t base your theology of Heaven on my books except where you believe they line up with Scripture, which makes the Bible the authority, not me. And while curiosity is understandable, don’t base your theology of Heaven on any book that tells of someone’s personal experience and memories, no matter how sincere they may be.

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Drowning in Distortion — Darren Aronofsky’s “Noah”

MONDAY • March 31, 2014

My first experience teaching the Bible came when I was asked at the last minute to teach a Sunday School class of first-grade boys. I was only 16 years old, and I did not exactly volunteer to teach the class. I found myself telling a familiar Bible story to six-year olds and explaining it as best I could. There have been very few Sundays since when I have not taught or preached, usually to a congregation a bit less fidgety than my first.

You learn one thing fast when teaching the Bible to six-year-old boys — they often think they can “improve” on the story as found in the Bible. First-grade boys are big on special effects, blowing away bad guys, exploding just about anything, and what we might gently call “narrative overkill.”

That helps me to understand director Darren Aronofsky and his new film, Noah. Aronofsky and his co-writer Ari Handel started with the Old Testament narrative about Noah, just about 2,400 words in English translation, and exploded it into a huge Hollywood production.

What could possibly go wrong?

Controversy about the movie erupted before the film hit the theaters. Three Muslim nations have banned the film and a number of evangelical figures registered concerns. Most of these concerns seemed to be about additions Aronofsky made to the narrative. Seeing the film after knowing of these concerns, I expected to be both entertained and irked. The actual viewing of the movie was an altogether different experience.

Evangelical Christians tend to be either too excited or too exercised about Hollywood. There is a periodic swing between giddy excitement that Hollywood has decided to make a movie about the Bible or a Christian theme and, on the other hand, barely restrained outrage that Hollywood has brought forth some new atrocity. Actually, most celebrations and consternations about Hollywood are overblown. The film industry is all about telling a story and selling movie tickets. There are artistic elements, worldview considerations, and moral dimensions to be sure, but Hollywood is, after all, an industry.

Believing that evangelical concerns about Noah were almost surely overblown, I went to see the movie. I was wrong. The concerns are not overblown. My response is not outrage, however, but deep concern – and part of my concern is that so many evangelicals are, in my view, focusing on the wrong issues.

Aronofsky, who has described himself as a “not-too-religious Jew,” is a skilled storyteller. His movies tend to be pretentious, but rarely boring. He has, to say the very least, added a very great deal to the Bible’s account of Noah in Genesis. In itself, that is not the problem.

As A. O. Scott, film reviewer for The New York Times commented, “The information supplied about Noah in the Book of Genesis is scant – barely enough for a Hollywood pitch meeting, much less a feature film.” Aronofsky told Rolling Stone magazine: “The film completely accepts the text, the four chapters in Genesis, as truth – just like if I was to adapt any book, I’d try to be as truthful to the original material as possible. It’s just that there’s only four chapters, as we had to turn it into a two-hour long narrative film. In the Bible, Noah doesn’t even speak. So of course we’ve got to dramatize the story.” Boy, did he dramatize it.

Before making that the issue, however, we had better note that evangelicals are not necessarily outraged to any degree when Hollywood (or anyone else) dramatizes the story, even adding non-biblical elements. There is no cold-hearted innkeeper in the Gospels, nor a donkey carrying the expectant Mary, but they make their way into countless movies made by and for Christians. There is neither a drummer boy nor a drum in the birth narratives of Christ, but no one seems to complain that the drummer boy appears. Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum.

Cecil B. DeMille added to Exodus to tell the story of the Ten Commandments, but that movie is loved by many evangelicals.

Why is Noah different?

Well, the problem is not that Aronofsky and Handel added to the Bible’s account. It is that they distort it to the uttermost, perhaps without even intending to do so. Since they knew that they had to “turn it into a two-hour feature movie,” they knew they had to invent a lot of material not found in the Bible. They may not have intended to distort the story as they did. Furthermore, Paramount Pictures had a big say in the final form of the film, much to Aronofsky’s frustration. The director and the corporation share responsibility for this movie.

The problem is not that the movie has to fill in any number of narrative gaps, or that Aronofsky used his imagination in so doing. His oddest characterization, by the way, may well be the “fallen angels” called the “watchers,” based rather loosely on the Nephilim found in Genesis 6:4. They appear in the film as giant figures made of something like rock and asphalt. They first appear as enemies of humankind, but one, speaking with the voice of Nick Nolte, protects Noah and convinces others to do likewise. They appear as mighty cartoon figures in the movie, but they really belong in a science fiction film.

In portraying the Nephilim this way, Aronofsky has not made these figures more strange than how the Bible describes them. The Bible actually presents them in even more bizarre terms. They are described as beings who were on the earth in those days, “when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and bore children to them.” This appears to be an indication that rebellious angels had sexual intercourse with human women, who bore sons described as “the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.” This understanding of the Nephilim seems to be affirmed in the New Testament in Jude, verses 6-7. Thankfully, this is not the Bible story I was assigned to teach those six-year-old boys many years ago.

There are big problems with how Aronofsky and Handel expand the narrative, even when we accept the fact that a film maker has to invent dialogue and embellish the narrative. Even as Aronofsky toldRolling Stone that he had tried “to be as truthful to the original material as possible,” he clearly decided to change key elements, rejecting the Bible’s account in some respects. He includes a wife for Shem on the boat, but when the ark begins its journey there are no wives for Ham and Japeth. Genesis states clearly that their wives were among the eight human beings who entered the ark. Aronofsky invents a scene in which a barely adolescent Noah witnesses the murder of his father, Lamech at the hands of the movie’s arch villain, Tubal-cain. Genesis makes that impossible. As a matter of fact, Aronofsky lifts Tubal-cain out of context in Genesis 4:22 as “the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron,” and puts him in the Noah narrative as Noah’s arch-rival, representing the line of Cain making war on the line of Shem. He even puts him on the ark, depicting Ham as his co-conspirator against Noah.

Aronofsky’s skill in cinematography and movie-making is clear. The visuals are often arresting and many of his narrative devices work brilliantly. Others are simply odd, like the suggestion that Methuselah would give Noah a hallucinogenic potion so that he can hallucinate God’s will. The list of odd elements would be very long.

But the odd elements are not the problem, the movie’s message is. Furthermore, the way that message distorts the Genesis account is a far larger problem when it becomes clear that the misrepresentation extends to the master narrative of the Bible – including the character of God.

Aronofsky presents the flood as the Creator’s judgment upon industrialization, urbanization, and ecological predation of humanity in the line of Cain. To be fair, there are elements of these themes in Genesis. But the Bible straightforwardly declares that the flood was God’s verdict on the sinfulness of humanity, seen in the wickedness and sinfulness that are described as “violence” and depicted, as in the tower of Babel narrative, as nothing less than idolatry. “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continuously.” [Genesis 6:5]

In Noah, the existence of humanity is a blight upon the earth. Rather than suggesting that humans had misused and abused the dominion mandate of Genesis 1:28, human dominion is depicted as the fundamental problem. This leads to a horrifying anti-humanism in the movie that cannot be rescued by the (finally) rather hopeful conclusion, with Noah and his family depicted as placidly agrarian and vegetarian, restarting human civilization on a placid hillside. The covenant God made with Noah in Genesis 9 explicitly gives humanity animal flesh to eat, and the dominion and stewardship granted to humanity in Genesis 1:28 and re-set in Genesis 9:1-17 is a function of human beings made in God’s image. Image-bearing assigns dominion. The real question is what we will do with that dominion.

Aronofsky introduces Noah as a kind and caring family man, but his divine assignment turns the movie’s Noah into a sociopathic monster. At this point the movie veers into a radical distortion of the biblical account. Noah is now depicted as a madman ready to murder his own grandchildren in order to end humanity and rid creation of the human threat. This kind of distortion of the story is what led Christopher Orr of The Atlantic to refer to Aronofsky as “more Old Testament than the Old Testament itself.” The Old Testament, we might say, is Old Testament enough, on its own.

This not only misses the point of the Genesis narrative, it corrupts it. Aronofsky is telling a truly fascinating story in these segments of the film, but it is not the story of Noah as found in the Bible. Totally missing from the movie is the understanding that God is simultaneously judging and saving, ready to make a covenant with Noah that will turn the biblical narrative toward Abraham and the founding of Israel. God is spoken of in the movie, but he does not speak. He is identified only as “The Creator,” and he appears to be driven by an essentially ecological fervor. The entire context of covenant is completely absent.

God’s act of creation is both portrayed and celebrated as an act of divine glory and wonder, but Aronofsky cannot resist shaping the story to fit the theory of evolution, right down to the animation. The recasting of the creation narrative is not subtle.

The constant discussion of humanity as good or evil falls far short of the Bible’s treatment of sin. The problem is not that Aronofsky and Handel push an environmental message. There must surely be elements of that message in Genesis 6-9. The problem is their depiction of humanity as a blight upon the earth. The Genesis narrative clearly and consistently presents humans as divine image-bearers, though fallen. God’s purpose in the flood is not to destroy all humanity, but to begin anew with Noah as, in a sense, a new Adam. In this sense Noah and the ark function to point to what God will do for sinful humanity in accomplishing atonement for sin through the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.

Genesis presents Noah as a faithful and obedient man. His obedience to God’s command is evident in Genesis 6:22 – “Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.” In Hebrews 11:7 we are told that Noah “in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household.” In doing so, “he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.” In 2 Peter 2:5, Noah is described as “a preacher of righteousness.” In no biblical text is he presented as a murderous sociopath whose own moral judgment on the wickedness of humanity is in any way central to the story. The Bible presents God as the central actor in the story – not Noah.

More than anything else, the controversy over Noah should lead Christians to understand something that should be our natural instinct. We must recognize that the Bible tells its own story infinitely better than anyone else can tell it – Hollywood included. The Bible has suffered cinematic violence at the hands of its friends as well as its enemies. This is not to argue that the Bible is off-limits to Hollywood or that Christians, among others, should not make films and movies on biblical themes and narratives. It is to state, however, that no movie, book, story, song, or other narrative device can do what the Bible does on its own terms.

Hollywood knows that Christian families are a vast market. TIME published a major news report on the efforts undertaken by Aronofsky and Parmount Pictures to sell Noah to the Christian community. Similarly, USA Today reported on Hollywood’s new interest in the Christian audience. The writer of that report, Scott Bowles, quoted Jeffrey McCall, a professor of media studies at DePauw University: “Hollywood has the same corporate and relativist values it has had for many years . . . . The producers have, however, identified a market that is underserved and won’t come to the movie theater to watch crazy violence and sex-drenched plots.”

We are given all that we need to know about Noah in the Bible – and we need every word of the Bible. We cannot expect Hollywood to tell that story for us, or even to tell the story well. Our response to Noahshould not be castigation and cultural outrage, but rather a sober realization that the story is ours to tell, and to tell faithfully.

In a lengthy essay for The New Yorker, Tad Friend recounted Darren Aronofsky’s road to making Noah. The essay is not for the faint-hearted. In it, Aronofsky declares Noah to be “the least Biblical Biblical film ever made.”

We can’t say we weren’t warned. And yet, Aronofsky is almost surely far off the mark when he makes that statement. Noah is not the least biblical movie ever made about the Bible. There have been worse, and will be worse again. The movie is not without its brilliance and moments of penetrating insight. But it gets the story line wrong, indulges in eccentric exaggeration, and distorts the character of both Noah and God. That is what surprised me. I expected to be irritated by the movie – but I found myself grieved.

Oddly enough, the most important statement about the movie came at the conclusion of A. O. Scott’s review in The New York Times. The review, like most in the Times, ended with a statement about the movie’s rating, usually detailing the reason for the rating in terms of sex or violence (or both).

At the end of Scott’s review of Noah we find these words: “’Noah’ is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). “And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and only Noah remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.”

Scott’s point is clear enough – the Genesis account of Noah is messy and troubling and violent. Of course, it is filled with grace and mercy, too. The Bible tells us the story as we are to know it and tell it, and it is ours to tell. Again, the Bible is infinitely better at telling its own story than anyone or anything else, including and especially Hollywood. Perhaps the main lesson Christians are to learn from this movie is that if we do not tell the story, others will.

Dr. Mohler is the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky

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In the holiday movie A Christmas Story, all that ten year old Ralphie wants for Christmas is a an official Red Ryder B.B. Gun.The only thing standing in the way of his obtaining this prize possession is the constant refrain (led by his mother): You’ll shoot your eye out! As most ten year old boys know, those words are DEATH to owning anything moms deem as “dangerous weapons” (slingshots, pocket-knives, and rubber-band guns included!). Just when Ralphie thinks he has found a way to circumvent all of the naysayers, the dreaded refrain is heard once again…and again…and again! Does Ralphie ever get his Red Ryder BB Gun? If you haven’t seen the movie, I’ll simply reassure you with these words: “Thank you Dad!”

Obviously, shooting one’s eye out is not to be taken lightly. Over the years I’ve met a few people who have lost an eye due to some tragic accident or trauma. The very descriptions of how such accidents occurred is NOT for the squeamish! I think that most of us can relate to just how painful it would be to lose an eye in ways better left unsaid.

So imagine you are listening to Jesus in the first century, and He teaches this: If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. (Matthew 5:29 ESV) Tearing out your OWN eye sounds quite painful to me. And that’s exactly the point! Jesus is calling us as his disciples to deal radicallyand ruthlesslywith our sin. No coddling! No attempting to live at peace with the very sin(s) that would destroy us. Jesus is calling us to take the pursuit of holiness seriously–VERY SERIOUSLY!

Jerry Bridges, in his classic book, The Pursuit of Holiness, writes: Can you imagine a soldier going into battle with the aim of “not getting hit very much”? The very suggestion is ridiculous. His aim is not to get hit at all! Yet if we have not made a commitment to holiness without exception, we are like a soldier going into battle with the aim of not getting hit very much. We can never be sure if that is our aim, we will be hit–not with bullets, but with temptation over and over again.

It is only by learning to deny temptation that we will ever put to death the misdeeds of the body. Learning this is usually a slow and painful process, fraught with much failure. Our old desires and our sinful habits are not easily dislodged. To break them requires persistence, often in the face of little success. But this is the path we must tread, painful though it may be. (Bridges, pp. 97-98)

More than 350 years ago, Puritan author, John Owen wrote:

Do you mortify [work hard at killing sin]? Do you make it your daily work? Be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.“

John Owen understood what was at stake! Do you? Do I?

How thankful I am for the gospel! But it is not a gospel that makes peace with any sin in our lives. The very Apostle Paul who could write: “I am not ashamed of the gospel” (Romans 1:16), could also write: “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:13). There’s no contradiction between an evangelical view of the Gospel, and a ruthless, death-dealing approach to the sin in our lives. In fact, it is ONLY the gospel that enables us to have any measure of real success against sin–any sin!

So let’s move forward in our obedience to Christ, not with the weak arm of the flesh, but in the sin-destroying power of the Spirit. And let’s also remember that according to Jesus, there are far worse things than losing an “eye” or even a “hand” (Matthew 5:29-30). FAR WORSE!

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Since the first T4Gin 2006, I (and several men from our church) have been privileged to attend this biannual conference Louisville, KY. I have considered it one of the spiritual highlights of my walk with Christ, as well as one of the most beneficial conferences to me in my ministry as a pastor. This year’s theme is Unashamed. The following video is just a reminder of what it means to live out the Gospel “Unashamed” in evangelism.

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I happened to see a videothis morning in which Bill O’Reilly was arguing with Laura Ingraham over O’Reilly’s complaint that conservatives need to do more than “thump the Bible” in making our case against gay marriage. Not only was O’Reilly incredibly arrogant and rude, but his colossal mistake highlights the key issue in the culture war today.

O’Reilly presupposes that the Bible is not an acceptable source of authority for our culture. Conservatives must accept that liberals will not listen to Scripture and therefore craft a moral consensus on grounds other than the Bible. What he fails to realize is that apart from God and his Word, the only moral consensus possible to man is an evil pagan idolatry. It is precisely because the Bible has been excluded from public discourse that our nation is so aggressively pursuing a debauchery like that of the ancient Canaanites and is suffering a societal breakdown of, well, biblical proportions. The only way to reverse this trend is to reassert the Bible’s validity for both private and public moral standards.

Another way to say this is that Bill O’Reilly fails to realize that the Bible is the revelation of a true and living God: as Francis Schaeffer put it, he is “the God who is there.” For this reason, the decisive issue of our time pertains precisely to our attitude to God’s Word. Apart from a respectful embrace of biblical authority, there is nothing to halt our plunge into the abyss. Or, to put it differently, the true issue today is not what the Supreme Court will think about gay marriage but what the true and living God thinks about America.

Biblically, there is no other explanation for the wholesale breakdown of our society and the rapidly accelerating sexual perversity than God’s judgment. The only solution is the Bible. So instead of persuading Christians to accept the societal marginalization of God’s Word, O’Reilly would do better to urge Christians to become more militantly biblical. Like every other once-godly nation, we will stand or fall based on our attitude towards God’s Word.

Finally, this reminds Christians that the most important institution in America today is the church. Unless our pulpits proclaim the truth and grace of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, and unless Christians live such bold and gracious lives that attract the interest of the watching world, there can be no hope for our generation. Whatever the Supreme Court decides and whatever confusion is wrought by the pundits of the left and of the right, there is great hope for America if God’s people regain a missionary zeal for the gospel and a holy passion for God and his Word.